Ringing The Cash Register

Occasionally, things work out perfectly.

I am sitting here in front of my screens, and ALL NINE of my current positions are in the green. That includes four “RISK ON” positions (X), (GS), (AAPL), (HD), and five hedging “RISK OFF” positions, (GDX), (AAPL), (ABX), (NEM), (GS).

As a result the Mad Hedge Fund Trader alert services has just posted its best month since inception a decade ago, up an eye-popping 16.30%. It’s a performance you only dream about, even after you have been at the game for a half century. That brings us a net profit of 40.95% for 2017 year-to-date, and 56.40% for the past 12 months. Our average annualized return now moves up to 32.10%.

An aggressive sector reallocation was the key to my success, out of the FANG’s and into financials, gold, metals, and industrials.

It was a simple choice of moving out of this year’s big winners, which peaked in July, and into lagging losers. Or out with the new, and in with the old.

The good news is that this trend could continue for the rest of this year.

I made money on my bond short (TLT), even though the market went against us, thanks to fortuitous timing and time decay. Perfect timing aggressively trading the Volatility Index (VIX), both from the long side and the short side through the XIV, was also a major moneymaker.

I was so hot that even the trades I didn’t do did extremely well. I missed on Alcoa (AA), which took off like a scalded cat before I could get the Trade Alert out. Union Pacific (UNP) opened Friday with a $1.00 gap move up. Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), the world’s largest copper producer, went ballistic before I could make a move.

It’s as if the market knew what I was thinking.

Even plodding platinum (PPLT), palladium (PALL), and copper (COPX) have recently been trading like dotcom stocks.

It’s about a global synchronized economic recovery, which I was able to spot very early on. There is no doubt that decade high growth rates in China, Japan, and Europe are pulling the US up from its own moribund 2% rate, kicking and screaming all the way. That is music to the ears of equity investors. They are clearly willing to look through any 5%-10% correction that may be upon us for fear of missing out on the bigger move.

The market is doing one heck of a job climbing a “wall of worry.”

The new market leaders are the metal bashing, “if you drop it on your foot it will hurt” stocks. Many of these haven’t seen positive market action for five and a half years. It leads me to dust off my old research from the last time we made fortunes in these names during 2010-2012.

The central bankers’ Woodstock at Jackson Hole turned out to be a snore, with the independent Fed governors universally baying for continued interest rate normalization.

That means we are going to get two more 25 basis point rate hikes this year, one in September and another in December, deflation be damned!

Of course, the bond market went up on this news, when it should have gone down. Obviously, a global profit glut is overwhelming all other factors in the fixed income market.

Washington disappeared off the radar this week, to the benefit of all “RISK ON” investments. At this point investors don’t give a damn what the president says. He is, in effect, a lame duck.

Instead, it’s all about earnings, earnings, earnings, and that augurs for higher share prices sooner.

There are a number of important data releases coming this week that will give us all a much better read on the economy.